1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to techniques of providing services using e-tickets.
2. Description of the Related Art
An electronic ticket (e-ticket) system for providing services using e-tickets is disclosed by Unexamined Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2002-324256. Through the use of e-tickets, this system aims to eliminate a complicated manual procedure when offering a discount to a user of one service with use of another service as a necessary condition for the discount.
For example, this system may be applied in a situation where, if a person has a ticket stub of a movie at a movie theater, he or she can get a discount at a restaurant near the movie theater.
In such cases, however, though the restaurant can benefit from more customers and greater sales, a distributor of the movie does not have any benefits. In view of this, there are demands from content providers which provide content such as movies and storage media storing video information, for a system that contributes to expanded sales of a content service.